Select Board Intends To Renegotiate "Good Neighbor Agreement" With Vineyard Wind

The Nantucket Select Board announced its intention to re-negotiate the so-called Good Neighbor Agreement with Vineyard Wind at its Wednesday night meeting, 11 days after its disastrous turbine blade failure southwest of the island.

“This emergency has also revealed the inadequacy of Vineyard Wind’s coordination and communication required by the Good Neighbor Agreement,” Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr said, reading from a prepared statement. “Although the Town has done its part to honor our obligations, we intend to renegotiate the terms of the Agreement in light of this accident.”

The full statement can be read below.

The Good Neighbor Agreement, also signed by the Nantucket Preservation Trust and the Maria Mitchell Association, requires Vineyard Wind to pay the signatories $16 million in remediation in exchange for promises of support for the project. The Select Board has long contended that, as they had no power to stop the project, signing was the best way to ensure Nantucket got something in return. But some islanders, including local nonprofit ACK4Whales, believe that signing the agreement was a mistake and the town should renege on the deal, contending that no amount of money should be able to buy support for the project and its potential impacts on marine life and the historic character of the island.

After a series of questions from the public about reports that some ships continue to lay cable from the mainland to the wind farm, Vineyard Wind representative Richard Smith clarified that not all work on the project has stopped.

“To the extent that there is some work going on and this is not something that would be happening necessarily every day, that is something that has been approved by [The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] for us to be doing,” he said, claiming that the federal government’s stop order only requires Vineyard Wind to end most, not all, work associated with the wind farm.

“Our understanding was the project was stopped,” Mohr replied. “That doesn't sound like stopped means stopped.”

Also during the meeting, Vineyard Wind representatives claimed that reports of new debris are decreasing.

“Most of the reports of debris that is out there, as we're investigating them, we're not finding debris, we're finding trash and the like,” Smith said.

Roger Martella, the chief sustainability officer and head of government affairs at GE Vernova, also gave an update on efforts to remove the remainder of the blade that is still attached to the turbine.

“We are as motivated to have the blade removed as soon as possible as anyone else is,” Martella said. “We took a significant step in the right direction today for the first time.”

Before the blade can be removed, GE Vernova has to confirm that it is safe for crews to approach it. To do that, they have rotated the blade slightly while circling it with ships to recover any debris that falls. So far, nothing has fallen, and teams may soon be able to begin work on removing the blade.

Facing a series of criticisms and questions from the public for a second consecutive week, GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind representatives again declined to answer some questions, including how much of the blade has been recovered, what financial compensation Vineyard Wind will offer, and what the potential risks of consuming local fish and shellfish may be. Representatives did confirm information from previously released press releases on the cause of the failure and its material composition. A comprehensive review of all blades is underway, and GE Vernova is uncertain how the manufacturing deviation that caused the failure slipped past inspections designed to catch such errors.

Arcadis, the firm employed by GE Vernova to handle the environmental review of the blade collapse, has not yet begun water quality testing and neither has the Town, but both plan to do so soon.

“To create an experiment that has valid results, it takes some time,” Mohr said. “It's not as simple as going out with a specimen jar.”